The Unlikely Affair
by A Quarter Past
Summary: "It's not that we had an affair, it's that we could have had an affair." The first five years after Kathryn Janeway gets her crew home are a little bit more interesting (and boring) than she expected them to be, and she's pretty sure that the scuttlebutt is broken.


** The Unlike Affair**

(1/5)

i

It didn't take long (about the time Voyager fell into the orbit of Earth) for the tumultuous relationship between expectation and reality to rudely put a halt to the dreams of a one, Kathryn Janeway. She'd rather foolishly expected to be _ happy _ that her crew had finally found its way home, but with the incandescent blue of her home planet looming larger and bluer in her view screen, she'd realized that she would give just about anything (Harry's spleen, if need-be) for one more slap-happy week in the Delta Quadrant.

What was supposed to be a month of debriefing followed by a slow integration back into Alpha Quadrant life, turned into a streamlined week-and-a-half of Starfleet disguised insanity due to the reality of a Federation so starved for good news _("__feel-good news, Kathryn, there isn't any!"_) that the admirals were willing to spin high-karat gold out of a battered tin-captain. Rather than going through discretionary hearings concerning her less-than-marvelous command decisions, Kathryn Janeway became the poster child of all-the-things-that-had-gone-right (or, at least, all-the-things-that-hadn't-gone-that-wrong) in the post-war society.

Re-integration into her old life had therefore been indefinitely halted by a media and Fleet PR consultants that just didn't know how to quit while they were ahead.

And the gossip?

Well, as always, it was as inventive as a group of Ferengi trying to sell depleted dilithium crystals above market price.

Serving as the interim commander of Emergency Operationss — a position meant to help ease her back into taking orders but really only served to make her want to break every. single. one — Vice-Admiral Janeway was given excellent and thorough access to Fleet-wide communications. Something, she expected, that would help her keep up with her old Voyager family.

For instance, she learned that Harry Kim would be promoted to Lieutenant two weeks before he did, that Tuvok was being offered reassignment to a science vessel that would remain in close proximity to Vulcan for two years, that B'Elanna would be given a position as the assistant research coordinator behind the new slip-stream project, and Chakotay's rank would be permanently re-instated.

What Kathryn did not have great access to was the latest relationship scuttlebutt, as it existed via the news and gossip feeds — something that Tom Paris took great pleasure in sifting through and forwarding to most of the ranking officers from Voyager. So, when she received the latest update from her ex-pilot, she'd expected another featured piece on the surprisingly vibrant and still-going-annoyingly-strong relationship between Voyager's XO and its ex-drone, and the attached betting pool on how long it would take for said still-going-annoyingly-strong relationship to implode.

Reality, as she had yet to fully comprehend, was utterly delusional:

'_Probably won't amount to anything_,' read Tom's short attaché, '_Thought you could use a laugh._'

Beneath it was the headline:

'**Behind the Unlikely Affair: _Voyager crewman explains relationship between Kathryn Janeway and her EMH, Mark I _ ** ' .

She promptly spat her coffee at the computer.

For once, expectation and reality fell into a perfect line, as there was, in fact, a great deal of laughter.

ii

Where Tom _had_ gone wrong was in his assumption that the gossip would amount to nothing.

Three months, eight days, and-she-really-was-too-busy-to-keep-track-of-the hours later and the topic just wouldn't go away. Oh, sure, it didn't make endless headlines and wasn't the most prevalent piece of gossip to come out of Voyager's return home, but it would appear seemingly at random — a conversational scrap at the bottom of social repertoires, gossip that no one really quite believed but talked about anyway when they didn't know what to say to one another aside from, _'__The weather is quite lovely, and have you heard that Admiral Janeway and her holographic doctor might have had an affair _ _?_'. She hadn't even seen much of "her" EMH since Voyager's landing, except to lend the occasional hand and stern glare at the half a dozen depositions that acted as precursors to a series of panels that would determine whether or not the Doctor was sentient and sapient enough to stand as an individual under Federation law.

(Just thinking of all of that left her out of breath).

They were both kept rather busy as of late, and their fledgling tradition of friendly coffee dates seemed to have been left behind in the Delta Quadrant, but that didn't keep people from wild speculatation.

So, Kathryn Janeway did what she'd always done best in the light of other people's flagrant stupidity; she dug her heels into the proverbial sand and made a great show of pretending that she had no idea what was being said about her. Her friends, family, the majority of the Voyager crew that kept in contact — even the Doctor himself — all took a note from her book and kept mum on the subject.

Except for Tom, but that was expected.

And now that she thought of it, Tuvok had once said, "It is not the most unfortunate, baseless rumor about your actions to be perpetuated since our return."

So good was she at ignoring the wild speculation about her "unlikely" and completely false affair with the Doctor, that roughly eight months after her return to the Alpha Quadrant, Kathryn Janeway had all but forgotten that she was the topic of such grossly miscalculated intrigue. By the tenth month, she _had_ forgotten. Mostly because, at around that point, approximately every ship assigned to low-risk missions in the Alpha Quadrant had managed to stumble into gratuitous amounts of life threatening- danger.

It was her job, as the head of Emergency Ops, to make sure that the number of deaths didn't exceed the monthly projections she was given by the dozen or so Admirals that outranked her. These numbers, in turn, were determined by a group of people who'd probably spent their entire adult lives trying to break the record for digits of Pi memorized. This bothered Kathryn greatly, on a very deep and philosophic level, but she was too busy overseeing the development of actual rescue missions to really care.

(The good news was that she had a nearly miraculous tendency to keep said numbers of death so far beneath the projected red line that no one stopped to condemn her for how she was doing it, through a mix of intuition and sheer determination, both fueled by coffee, and seven years of having acquired a since-then unheard of ability to not get half — or all — of a crew killed in a volatile region of space).

That's why, when the Doctor stopped in for a visit one day and the enormous din of the cramped Emergency Ops office died to quiet breathing, Kathryn thought it was because a large number of her lower-ranking officers were in the medical profession and were rendered temporarily mute by their awe/impolite-curiosity of him (with assumptions like this, he probably wouldn't need to use his ego as a defense mechanism for very much longer). In reality, they were all trying to hear what was being said while she led him into her private office.

"Doctor! What brings you here?" If she sounded pleasantly surprised to see him, it was because she was. Hidden in the question, however, was another, '_How did you manage to gain access of your_ _mobile emitter? _ ' which was, regrettably, supposed to be in the possession of Starfleet until the hearings on his status concluded.

"I had a break in my incredibly busy schedule and asked myself who hadn't been graced with my presence in while. So, of course, I thought of you."

When her office doors closed and the glass darkened to afford them privacy, his superior expression faltered and became wary. Before Kathryn could ask, he fingered his collar, pulling it away from his neck to display a narrow strip of metal pinned to the inside.

"Dr. Zimmerman procured the materials through private channels," his tone implied that this had all been done illegally, "in order to make me another mobile emitter. He technically owns it, so we're running under the assumption that Starfleet will not take notice and/or take it away."

Stepping closer, Kathryn got a good look at the device and was actually fairly impressed by its sleek design, "Does it operate the same?"

"In every way that counts," he flattened the collar back into place, "and in some ways I would prefer very few people become aware of."

Although her office was sealed off from main Emergency Ops, Kathryn understood his hesitation. People were polite, but the discussion about whether or not he should be classified as a living being was still a highly volatile debate.

"How about coffee? I'm three hours due for lunch and can easily clear my afternoon." That last bit was a lie — that morning there had been reports of an interplanetary pandemic; they were still trying to coordinate efforts, but she was willing to delegate her responsibilities for a friend who needed to talk.

The Doctor went from wary to aghast in record time, "It's three in the afternoon! It's not healthy to skip meals, and I know for a fact that you think a balanced breakfast only needs to consists of three servings of coffee! Food. We're getting you food, and you're drinking decaf!"

This last bit was heard by the entirety of Emergency Ops, as Kathryn had made the mistake of opening the door so she could lead him out. Someone was chuckling, and since the room was still as silent as a tomb, Kathryn was easily able to triangulate the offender's location and stare them down. Ensign Lowrey, a xenolinguist fresh out of the Academy, shrank in her seat until Kathryn's eyes softened — they had all been slammed with long hours for weeks, she couldn't begrudge anyone who found something to laugh about.

Lieutenant Commander Lavek, a startlingly expressive female Vulcan nearly twice her age (who Kathryn could swear had almost smiled on several occasions) appeared at her side, "I assume by the sudden outburst, that you will be taking lunch today?"

Which translated to: '_Someone call the press, Kathryn Janeway is finally taking a break! _ '

"Close but, no. I'll be taking lunch and the entire afternoon off. Do you think you can keep this place in line?" she teased.

Kathryn had learned, in her many years of friendship with Tuvok, that carrying an inside joke with a Vulcan was not only possible but somewhat of a requirement if you wanted to be anything more than someone they frequently tried to condemn for acting in a perpetually irrational manner. Vulcans enjoyed their humor, even if they could not express it, and seemed to deeply respect those who knew where to find and carefully extract it.

Both of the Vulcan's brows rose, "I believe you are trying to bait me."

"I believe I have succeeded. I'll see you tomorrow."

Commander Lavek folding her hands behind her back, made a soft thoughtful sound, and moved away.

"So," Kathryn clapped her hands together, "Buenos Aires?"

Which really meant, _'__Care to get so far away from Starfleet _ _Headquarters that no one will bother to follow us_? "

"Where else?"

iii

It was raining in Buenos Aires when they transported in. Raining perhaps wasn't the correct term but more of a fraudulent understatement. The sky was, quite literally, physically assaulting the city and its surrounding regions with heavy belts of water, and if you turned toward the east and stared for a good while, you'd realize that the wind was trying to move the entire ocean inland. This all, of course, made what the transporter operator in San Francisco had said seem like wishful thinking ("Forecast says there's a light rainstorm. Might want to take an umbrella").

They _had_ brought one, but that didn't stop the two-or-five inches of water on the ground from splashing up and drenching Kathryn to her knees. The Doctor, ever the gentlemen, kept close but let her stand fully under the umbrella. Since the rain seemed to slide right off of him, Kathryn didn't really care to argue with him over this.

"This is perfect," the Doctor shouted over approximately a thousand decibels of mother nature punishing her children, "if anyone decided to follow us, they're in for a rude awakening!"

Since it was impossible to see more than three inches past her nose, Kathryn had to agree with him, "Let's find the cafe before we get lost at sea!"

This was much easier said than done. Only after they had spent fifteen minutes dodging large projectiles and rain hellbent on proving it was aerodynamic enough to fall horizontally were they able to duck into a building with a giant coffee mug painted on a sign hanging above the door. The proprietors, a woman significantly younger than Kathryn and a man that looked like the former's father, stared at them briefly in shock. It was quite clear by their mirroring expressions that they hadn't seen a costumer all day.

A puddle formed under Kathryn's boots; the Doctor's uniform remained frustratingly dry.

Finally, the man spoke, his expression going from incredulous shock to bemusement, "Only Starfleet officers would brave this weather for a cup of coffee."

"I find it always tastes better when you have to work for it," as she said this, Kathryn thought of all those times that she had to plead with the replicators on Voyager just so she wouldn't have to try another one of Neelix's just-like-coffee concoctions.

A sort of delightful reproach had filled the eyes of the young woman, "Did your friend stand behind you as you walked?"

Confused for only a moment, Kathryn smiled when she understood. It had been raining sideways, and these two didn't know who they were, "Something like that."

"Elena, take the..."

"Admiral."

"Take the admiral to the back and get her a fresh pair of clothes. The..."

"Doctor," the Doctor spoke up.

"Yes. The doctor may take a seat anywhere in the dining area while he waits."

It took ten minutes for Elena (an outgoing twenty-three year old with a unused doctorates in history, who thought Kathryn would look better in coral than in command red, and since the cafe didn't have access to uniform patterns, replicated her a full set of casual clothes. A understated pink sweater included) to get her situated in the back. It took another five for Kathryn to dry off, warm up, and return to the dining area of the cafe.

The Doctor had taken the table farthest from the door. Hanging over the back of one of the spare chairs was his uniform jacket. Something in Kathryn's brain shorted out at the sight of it, if only because for all intents and purposes it should have been impossible, but her face remained schooled as she sat, as if seeing the Doctor in his regulation grey tee was a common occurrence .

And then she quirked her brow.

With a satisfied grin, the Doctor extended a closed fist across the table, palm down as if he expected to drop something on its surface. Kathryn got the hint and extended her hand palm up. A moment later, something thin and cool hit her skin and she felt herself nearly gasping at what she saw. The Doctor's new mobile emitter was not attached to his person.

"I'm guessing this is the something you don't want many people to know about," she said somewhat breathlessly.

"It has a three meter radius," he beamed, "It's not perfect, I honestly don't dare to remove it beyond a couple of feet, but it prevents people from deactivating me by simply _plucking_ it off."

Elena brought a steaming mug over at this moment and set it in front of Kathryn on the table, and said, "Your sandwich will be ready in only a couple of minutes," before departing again.

"I hope you don't mind. I took the liberty of ordering for you."

"I'll forgive you if the coffee is good," Kathryn blew across the surface of the beverage and took a small sip, it was better than good for being decaffienated, and so she held the mobile emitter out for him to take, "So does this mean that you've been keeping in contact with Dr. Zimmerman?"

"Unfortunately," his tone was haughty, but there was fondness in there, like a child whose parent was a grouch and every-bit hard to get along with but inexplicably endearing despite of all of it, "He was on Earth to petition Starfleet to have custody of my program until the hearings have concluded. That's how I got this," he jiggled his emitter.

"Did they give it to him?" Kathryn was curious. Her own petition had been denied, as she had expected it would (on the grounds that she had far too much power to squirrel him away should the verdict not be in his favor). Would they give it to his creator?

"Reg and Admiral Paris were able to swing it in his favor," unspoken was the sentiment that they had both been swinging many things in the Doctor's favor, "I'm actually due to spend the next couple of months at Jupiter Station. Lewis says it's for surveillance,' but..."

"But you think that since he's already made you a mobile emitter, surveillance is just a pretense?"

The Doctor nodded, and they both fell quiet as Elena returned with Kathryn's food, "We have been told that the weather will settle by the evening. You are welcome to wait here until it does."

"Thank you."

When Elena retreated to the counter once more, Kathryn looked under the stop slice of bread and spoke softly, "If that's the case, be careful."

"Of course," he scoffed.

She ignored him, "Harry's been working with creating encrypted subspace messages that can be used by the old crew in a crunch." It was a fairly complex system that could be broken (as almost all could), but not easily and certainly not quickly enough for anyone to do anything about. She refrained from mentioning that Harry and called it MA'AM:

"I don't know if he actually planned on it being used, since it might just be another hobby of his, but I'll tell him to send you what he has. If something happens, do not hesitate to comm me."

Then she took a giant bite of her sandwich, and their conversation became a little less illegal.

iv

It was sometime after the Doctor spent an awful two months in the company of Lewis Zimmerman (the longest he had been away from Earth since Voyager's return), that Kathryn became aware that the EMH's creator had updated him with a number of new and interesting subroutines as well as a name.

He'd told her all of this over a comm-link while he was in-route to Earth, and the expression on his usually smiling face (at least since Chakotay and Seven took their dating off-world permanently nine months prior), was so devastated that it made Kathryn want to reach for a drink. All she had readily available was stale coffee, so she was forced to wait until his shuttle arrived to pull him into one of the several synthehol establishments on Starfleet Headquarter's main campus (if people were watching this strange spectacle, she wasn't in the mood to care).

She was in the middle of something pink in color and fairly bitter in flavor when he dropped the bombshell on her. She choked; he handed her a napkin.

"Excuse me. Did you say that he named you Greg?"

"Gregory Zimmerman, after his father," he hated it. It was so clear that he hated it, that Kathryn wasn't even all that surprised when he reached for her drink and took a long pull from the bottle (she did, however, briefly wonder if there would be a puddle of synthehol on the floor the next time he is deactivated, but managed to not say that out loud).

"Oh, this is awful! Peaches aren't supposed to be bitter!" he said this as if it was a personal affront to both him and his senses, "Admiral, how can you drink this?"

She was too busy confused by his choice of words to do anything other than say, "What?"

It took her the next thirty minutes to get anything of sense from him. During that time, she didn't ask for her drink back and he didn't seem inclined to give it. Apparently, Lewis Zimmerman had capitalized on his custodial rights when it had come to the Doctor's (cough, Greg's ) name. As far as she could tell from what was being said, this could not be changed unless he won his hearing.

"And who knows how long I'll be stuck with it. This...debacle...has lasted a year already."

Low and pleading now, "Kathryn, I don't want to be called Greg."

"And I don't want to call you Greg," the fact that she meant it surprised her. In all the years that he'd been activated, she'd expected the Doctor to take a name eventually, but hadn't ever been a willing participant in the search.

One of her small hands came to rest on his shoulder. Although they weren't exactly causing a scene, a number of people were watching, which meant that this little rendezvous would reach Fleet and Federation news before the hour was out. She'd rather utilize the rumors than have anyone know what she was minutes away from suggesting.

As the Doctor continued to drink, Kathryn narrowed her eyes and contemplated his out of character behavior, "What else did Dr. Zimmerman do?"

"A number of experimental subroutines were added to my program. He felt that if I could actually feel, taste and respond to external stimuli in 'appropriate' manners, then the opposition couldn't argue that I was a mere anthropomorphism."

"Uh-huh," she started to ease the bottle from his hand, "Is inebriation among those new subroutines of yours?"

"It. would. seem. so."

"People are watching, I suggest you deactivate it for the moment."

His shoulders tensed briefly, and then the Doctor nodded crisply, "I haven't gotten used to that one yet."

"Well, you've got plenty of time to learn your limits," or set them yourself, but she didn't say that last bit; instead, she turned and scowled at those who were still watching them openly.

"Do I?" he asked. It was melodramatic, but when wasn't he?

"Give me a few days to see what I can do. Certain admirals might be persuaded to...bring a favorable end to this case."

"Subterfuge, Admiral? I thought you were beyond that," his tone suggested anything but.

When her only response was a snort, he continued, "You mean you'll convince them to rule in my favor rather than have the decision based on my merits?" he had the good grace to whisper this.

Kathryn finished the drink off, coughed again because the taste really was as bad as bitter peaches, and slapped his back, "You really have a problem with that?"

"At this point? No. Ask me again in a year."

"Good. In that case, I recommend you not contact me until after the dust has settled."

"Not even with _MA'AM_?"

"Not even. _ Greg _ ."

He groaned.

v

Four long days later, Kathryn found herself constructing very important messages to the two Admirals who had the most influence in the Doctor's hearings. These were written with as much care as she could afford between several messy emergencies that involved ten ships and the entire world of Risa, which meant that both (informal) communiques were increibly short and to the point and may or may not have invited both admirals out for drinks. Two days after that, Kathryn had her responses, both of which led her to believe that all she had to do in order to make a difference in Starfleet was become a functioning alcoholic.

vi

The Officers Lounge (née Club) was a throwback to the early Starfleet years. It was a little bit flashy, quite a bit poorly lit, and therefore the perfect location to make all the backroom deals that weren't supposed to keep key (and therefore incredibly bureaucratically clogged) areas of the Federation running smoothly but did so anyway. There was nothing like some really good, really real alcohol to make a group of fundamentally different and inherently prideful people buckle down and get the fine print ironed out.

This seedier side of the Lounge's nature meant that Kathryn rarely went there, which was why she was still stuck in Emergency Ops — almost a year after her miraculous return to the Alpha Quadrant — but nobody was going to tell her that. In fact, she so rarely went there, that the last time she could definitively say she had gone was when her father had taken her and Phoebe when she was six.

From what she could remember, very little had actually changed.

It was fairly late into the evening — some four hours after the official end of her workday but really only twenty minutes since she'd actually called it quits — when Kathryn found herself squeezed between Rear Admirals Montgomery and cCmndhd, the latter of which was a native of an equally difficult to pronounce country and animatedly (on the verge of violently) refused to modernize his name to the phonetically accurate Smith so that the universal translators wouldn't suffer a seizure every time someone tried to pronounce it as written. That the constructed language of the nation of Qwghlmian (a dreary place somewhere in the vicinity of Great Britain, founded in 2063 by the few dozen or so rabid fans of a long-winded novelist who wrote about the place in great length before it actually existed*****) was even human in origin had baffled Kathryn for as long as she'd known that it was one of those dead languages (d. 2109) that had been revived for absolutely no good reason.

Montgomery, an attractive man approximately her age (and not recently married and divorced as in the case of the curious cCmndhd), was waxing poetic about the financial aid-disputes between a Cardassian ambassador, Garak-someone-or-another, and Lwaxana Troi (something anyone with access to Fleet news could gain access to, in all of its glory and gory detail). This was not what Kathryn had made this trip for, and so she waited impatiently for the opportunity to hijack the conversation.

…which came exactly two and a half hours later, when Montgomery left without preamble to go bother a pretty Captain, who was (supposedly) not under his chain of command). cCmndhd scooted further into Kathryn to make room for Vice Admiral P'ox, a friendly Bolian woman who had been circling their table with near predatory intensity for the last hour, waiting for Montgomery to get bored with his unenthusiastic audience and leave already.

The Vice Admiral said hello by downing and entire shot of something the shade of vicious purple and blinked, "I thought he'd never shut up."

cCmndhd said something that sounded like fifteen consonants strung together in no particular order, scowled when he realized just how far the Starfleet linguists had gone to make sure his native language stayed dead and switched to standard, "He's getting worse."

Kathryn, not very keen on gossip in this form, joined in anyway, "I went to the Academy with him. Trust me. This was better."

Cringes are generally thought of as a universal gesture of physical or emotional distress; all three shared one.

"I was surprised to receive your invitation," P'ox had clearly determined that it was a fine time to get down to business. This meant that another round of drinks was ordered and served — a tall golden beverage that bubbled very, very slowly.

"I assumed that you avoided this hole at all costs," cCmndhd tacitly agreed.

Clearly these two had _not_ looked over her command decision in the Delta Quardant . If they had, they would have come to the solid conclusion that Kathryn Janeway, though a moral woman, functioned in a gray space. Whatever it took to insure the _right_ conclusion was what she would do.

But she didn't say this; instead, to be polite, Kathryn decided to give the pretty drink a try, was instantly reminded of three week old socks, tried not to gag, and made a mental note to get the recipe to send off to Neelix, "To be perfectly honest with you," she coughed, "the panels concerning the status of one of my crew are dragging on. For no good reason."

She shot a pointed glare at cCmndhd who had enough grace to wince.

"I want them to end. Sooner rather than later and in his favor."

P'ox considered this, enjoying her sweat-and-athletes-foot flavored beverage as she did so, "As the overseer of this particular set of hearings, I admit I may be able to…impress a certain level of haste upon the proceedings."

cCmndhd grunted, the sound was obviously to cover up a rare smile, "I am fond of your EMH. As the presiding judge and the tie-breaking vote, I can influence certain outcomes."

It was almost too easy. No. It was too easy. Just like sticking it to the Borg Queen with future technology while simultaneously transporting a ship from one end of the galaxy to the other in mere moments. This, of course, meant that she would need to sacrifice herself in the process. Or something simila r.

Kathryn groaned, "All right. What do you want in exchange?"

"One more year in Emergency Ops," P'ox slurped the last of the drink — this time Kathryn did gag — "afterward you will lecture at the Academy until it is decided otherwise."

This was longhand for, '_You will never leave Earth in a professional capacity again._'

A life sentence of unequivocal boredom.

"You want me landlocked. Why?"

For a single moment, P'ox looked apologetic, but only for that moment, then she shrugged a uniformed shoulder, "You do not mix well with starships."

There were precisely three minutes where Kathryn tried to argue against this, but the Vice Admiral deftly cut her off with an offer to give her a classified study, carried out by no less than five of the Federation's best mathematical minds, that concluded in no uncertain terms that Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway did not mix well with s tarships. Apparently there were four proofs to support this, all of which were iron clad, and one of which and produced an entirely new branch of probability theory.

cCmndhd wasn't any less demanding, "I am in a billiards tournament this Wednesday. My partner, Admiral Montgomery, will find himself suffering from a severely sprained wrist that day," (Kathryn did not want to know how cCmndhd planned to make this a reality). "I want to win, which cannot be done with him, since he has terrible aim, so you will be his replacement."

"Done," she agreed emphatically, feeling like a giant loser (but this she could handle, if it meant that the Doctor could face his future as an individual and not a tool and most certainly not as _Greg_).

Both Admirals smiled at her; Kathryn sighed.

After cCmndhd excused himself, intent on saving the pretty Captain from his long-winded friend, P'ox prepared to leave as well, but not before fixing Kathryn with an uncanny stare.

"May I offer some advice, Kathryn?"

"By all means." _No_.

"Perhaps you should be careful. I would hate to see the growing scuttlebutt about you and the hologram to be given any real weight. Holo-addiction has slayed the careers of greater men. And women."

"The Doctor his my _friend_," Kathryn took a great deal of offense to this so-called advice, "a good one at that. My spending t ime with him and caring about his future is not holo-addiction. It's _natural_."

P'ox looked as if she could argue the point all night, but came to a silent conclusion and said only, "Your 'friend' will be given the rights of a Federation citizen before the next two months have concluded. If you will not think of your reputation, at least try to protect his. It's a difficult thing, starting out your life being considered another person's _relief._"

* * *

Endnotes:

1. Each part represents a year.

2. I have absolutely no intentions of making royalties from this (not that anyone would actually pay).

3. This has NOT been beta read.

***** Qwghlmian, its language and the name cCmndhd are all the products of Neal Stepehenson's novel Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Series (which I recommend to those who love long descriptions). These details from his stories gave me such a giggle that I wanted to add them here, as if several hardcore fans of his, in the Star Trek timeline, actually founded Qwghlmian in his honor, constructed its language, and then took great pride in it. Rather like Klingon for Trekkies and Trekkers.


End file.
